[P] Cold, dark and silent - Printable Version +- HELOVIA || The Way to the Sun (http://helovia.com) +-- Forum: Out of Character (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Archives (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +--- Thread: [P] Cold, dark and silent (/showthread.php?tid=23552) |
||||||
Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 04-07-2016
@Mauja RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 04-16-2016
The world was blank.
Mute. Dark gray and shapeless, formless, directionless, the distant outline of trees blurred into the uniform drab fog, even their closest kin hung behind a veil. Soft gray obscured their clarity even when he stood but a few feet away. At times like these he sometimes imagined he could see the water droplets suspended in the air, that he could see their small shapes, pick them out against their siblings, and the world would unravel like a crystal lattice and all would make sense... But he couldn't. Of course he couldn't. He could just feel them sticking to his whiskers, his eyelashes, little droplets forming on the tips of his pale coat. His breath smoking white in the saturated air. There was a certain kind of silence to foggy days (and nights)—the water veil swallowed sound, and if one strayed too far from the herd, things were simply.. silent, as if one was all alone. Mauja didn't mind. He had always been a ghost anyway; being a pale specter in the fog suited him just fine. It was a bitter thought, a bitter sentiment, and it reeked of all the things left unsaid, undone, between him and a certain other member of the herd—explanations left to rot upon his tongue and filter down to choke him in his lungs. He could pass within yards of someone and not know. They could pass within yards of him and not know. He turned his head, away, and bent his body to follow it, heading somewhere else, something his senses told him led to the ocean. No breeze rippled through the Edge as he moved, no sounds of waves breaking or gulls crying came to his ears; even the sound of his own hooves was muffled, distant. The only true indicator of him reaching his destination was that of the ghostly impressions of trees around him lessening, leaving him stranded in a grayed-out world where everything seemed a wall. Standing there, somewhere near the Edge, he actually felt a vague twinge of fear; for all that he knew, he was trapped in this fog, locked in between four, uniform walls which offered no distinction between heaven and earth. But there was something—some sixth ghost-sense tingling, and as he carefully drew closer to the Edge, he realized that he was not alone. The faint cries of gulls could be heard, and the sigh of the calm seas, but below him the grayed-out ground fell away into more of the shapeless gray. Slowly, he tilted his head to peer at the one who stood near him. Normally she glittered, pearly and icy white, but now, she was just as dreary as he was. Saying nothing, Mauja turned his head back to stare out into the blank nothingness ahead of him, thinking it was a rather fitting mirror of his soul. [ Sorry for the wait.. @Erthë! <3 Lost my sanity and for once cba to proof read, enjoy any eventual grammar/spelling/word choice mistakes. ] lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . RE: Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 04-25-2016
@Mauja RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 05-24-2016
He hadn't come here for company.
Nor had he come here to be alone—he was always alone these days. What had once been his paradise, his kingdom, his fortress and his haven, had become his grave. Hemmed in by ice and blocks of dark stone he withered, bit by bit, soft and slow, falling into decay. How many times hadn't he stood upon this limestone edge? Hooves digging into soft stone, toying with the dangers of the world, as the fogs of his goddess curled around his legs like a false promise of wings and mysticism and glory... Once, he had stood here a King, safe and secure within that fortress, heart and mind guarded closely by his glacial walls. Then, it had lent him strength. At the time he had thought the glimpses of something darker beneath the pale light of his eyes was what had drawn others to him, but even as he became a spiteful beast hissing from the deepest corners of his abode he charmed others. He had stood here as a Queen, up on the worn battlements of those walls; the fortress in a state of disrepair, the dust stirred by a handful of souls, and he had leaned heavily against the icy spires crowning the boundary of his heart. He had no longer been strong. He had yearned to come out, but he hadn't known how to. And now, the entire thing had been blasted apart, and he lay buried in the rubble. Erthë's presence was nothing to him. The muscles in his back and hind legs coiled. Perhaps all she would be was a witness of self-destruction, of ghosts leaping soundlessly into the fog—who would believe her, anyway? Tembovu was the only one who had glimpsed the gulf of his despair, the only one who would believe that he had truly jumped off the Edge... Tembovu would be the only one to know that he would come back. A day, a month, a year, a decade; he would come back. He couldn't not come back. He knew that she watched him, and he wondered, briefly, what she saw. What anyone saw—what inspired such loyalty, such curiosity, pity and hate... Perhaps all he was was a focus for the lives of others; a narrow point channeling their own emotions and purposes, enhancing them. And breaking him. He had always been curious of what it would feel like to leap off the edge, to free-fall, the closest he could come to flying— "Mauja?" And he had always been ice around a core of chaos; rationality tempering his impulsivity. Of course he would not leap off the World's Edge, least of all with a witness, who might suffer disastrous mental consequences from witnessing it. He doubted she'd care much at all that he had, for all intents and purposes, seen fit to end himself, but it was that whole matter of him inevitably showing up again. Could he do that to her? Ah, fuck it, who even cared anymore? His black-rimmed ears flicked belatedly, as if the fog had slowed the passage of his name from her lips into his brain, and after a moment his massive head swung upon his thick neck. Blue eyes, gray as the fog in the lack of light, settled on her lithe frame. He resisted the urge to crassly ask her what she wanted. "Hm?" he simply said instead, a puff of white smoke joining the fog in the over-saturated air. After a moment, one ear turned back. Perhaps he was so caught up in his own misery that he failed to consider that of others. After all, why was she here, staring at the ocean neither of them could see? Wings she might have, but as far as Mauja knew, she still had a choice to keep them folded. ".. you're not going to jump, are you?" he asked after a moment. What did he know, anyway? She was a crippled orphan ravaged by a divine war. That sounded like enough to mess anyone up. [ @Erthë! ] lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . RE: Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 05-24-2016
@Mauja RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 05-25-2016
Well. That went well. Fog-gray eyes lingered upon her muted form, a faint thread of concern worming its way through his heart—her silence was ..disturbing. Had she asked him the very same question, his silence would've been damning. In it would've hung the "yes" whispered in his tensed muscles, the forlorn trajectory of an exhausted heart. But, as the moments lengthened between them—and the yards seemed to lengthen as well, unbridgeable, too long should that spindly form leap from her perch and crash into the waves below—he got the feeling that it was shock stilling her voice.
And after a moment, she laughed—and not as he would've laughed, either, bitter and cynical and full of self-damnation. No: her laugh was full of life, of mirth, of shaking ice shattering and glittering in the sunlight. Suffice to say, jumping seemed to have been the farthest thing from on her mind. Mauja's ears fell back softly, and with a grunt of acknowledgment he turned his gaze into the gray wall of nothing again. So he'd tipped his hand. For all the good his carefully schooled gaze and cryptic little smiles could do, he'd just hung a sign around his neck stating "HI I THINK DARK AND DEPRESSIVE THINGS". For if not you, then me..? "No, I'm not! And I really hope you won't either, because catching you would be very difficult." Waitwhat? Why did she think she had to catch him if he took a leap? What was he to her? (Nothing, nothing, nothing—) The 'brow over his nearest eye arched questioningly as he peered at her. Did she care? (Probably not.) Did she just want to seem good? (Maybe.) Would she actually do it? (Only one way to find out.) The tension returned to his hindquarters, little snakes curling up beneath the skin, drawing his muscles taut as his eyes tried to gauge the milky distance to the actual edge— "I, um... " Unreadable eyes slid sideways again, a mass of blue-tinged gray focusing on the little sprite. He waited, heart pounding rebelliously. Perhaps she was going to follow it up with I really don't think you should jump, it seems like a stupid idea, but .. no. She hadn't reflected the question back at him; maybe not even the assumption. "You've been living here a long time, right?" He breathed out, white smoke coiling slowly from dark nostrils, and again the tension fell like a cloak from his body and he rocked forward ever so subtly, centering his off-set weight again. In all his years in Helovia, this was probably the first time someone had asked him for a history lesson. Most Helovians were so obsessed about the future—their future, their glory—that they forgot about the past. A long, bloodied past, with victories won upon the graves of others—as was the way with war and hatred. But here was one, a young one, thinking that maybe there was something to be had in the past. Arah had come to Helovia after Mauja's unicorns had been cast out. What did she know of those first early, dark years? Who knew of them at all, but Deimos? Ulrik? Who else was left? Lena had stayed out of it all, after all. It was an icy claw curling around his heart, a sudden lurch and his knees nearly buckled with the crushing sense of isolation crashing down upon his back (—around his heart). Was there no one else left..? He wracked his brains, but they all turned up dead. Some of the opposition was left alive, but the majority of them were dead or gone as well. His slightly widened eyes focused again, and his black-rimmed ears swept forward as he once again turned his pale head to look at her. "So what did our most esteemed lady tell you..?" [ @Erthë! ] lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . RE: Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 05-25-2016
RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 05-29-2016
It was easier this way—easier to hide, to sink into the depths of his past but with a thin film of ice between him and the emotions. (Wasn't that how it had always been? He'd been detached. He had always been detached.)
Breath continued to smoke from immortal lungs, making it so easy to lie, as plain a truth as the blood still coursing red through his aching veins. He was curious—tempted—to what would happen if his body was bled dry, or hacked to pieces. Would his presence linger like a spirit? Would he, finally, become the ghost he had been his entire life? Memories flickered at the forefront of his mind. The Basin on a cold, dark night, full of shadows which had nothing to do with blocked light. And.. dead things walking. Rotting flesh, rotting lips, dry voices creaking up from open throats and punctured lungs; was that what the future had in store for him? It would certainly let the Moon have a good laugh at him thirty years down the line. Kahlua. (Ouch.) Kaj. (Hate.) Archibald. (Hate.) Midas. (Irritation.) Thranduil. (A stranger.) Helovia made for good stories. And how sweet wouldn't it be, for it to just be stories to him, as well? Names and faces unknown, snippets of deeds pulled from the mists of time and not carved into his bones like a painful reminder of age. He himself probably didn't feature in any stories but perhaps the earliest (and who was around to tell them, anyway?), but he had been a grayed-out shadow in them all: watching, waiting, living. Where another could speak of an age of darkness, he could still recall the storm sweeping the Gods from their land and the profound, silent blackness superseding it. "It's as good a place as any to start," he mused after she voiced her frustration, watching the subtle, slow shift of the fog. "It's about, mh, three years ago now?" Long before she was born. He still remembered her little form, asking her mother to wake up from the puddle of blood she slept in; she was still a child, still spindly and thin and awkward in the way of youth. She had seen much already. She had witnessed the cruelty and haphazard, violent chaos of the world. She did not want stories padded with lies and fluff when the truth was dark and gritty. She wanted that dark, gritty truth, and as she flung her next question at Mauja he realized that she deserved the truth—anyone did, honestly, and whatever child-like innocence Erthë had once possessed had been taken from her. There was nothing left to shield. Slowly, he let his gaze return to the sea he couldn't see. "I came here a little over six years ago," he said, quietly. He had been six years old, three years a soldier, three years an arrogant, albeit powerful, idiot. That made for more than half his life spent in Helovia, though not all of it in the Edge—and not all of it in Helovia, either. He had come and gone a few times, but he supposed with his acceptance of the Moon's gift his wandering days were over. Who knew, perhaps he would drop dead the moment he set his hoof outside of the borders? ".. and six years ago, was when Helovia as we know it today began to take form. It was a land rebuilding, ravaged by a war spurred by two gods—Sun and Earth. The unicorns of the Edge had long since fled into the sea, and those who stayed were slaughtered in the crossfire. It only ended when mostly everyone was dead, and marked the start of a new era. Those, like me, who came as strangers to this land mingled with those who had survived, and forged the future." His snowy shoulders heaved in a small shrug. It felt like an eternity ago—a lifetime ago, a thousand different futures laid out before him, and none of them had come to pass. Made out of ice, shadow, and memory, he turned his head back to fix his gaze upon her. "There are many points in time where I could start the story of the Edge. I leave it up to you to decide." [ LOOK CHAN I'M BEING GOOD AND NOT TAGGING YOU THIS TIME XD ] lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . RE: Cold, dark and silent - Blu - 08-07-2016 unarchived per request RE: Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 08-07-2016
RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 09-11-2016 Of course.
The hunger for knowledge was like any other hunger; it demands the grandest, most satisfying of meals, frolics into the buffet when unleashed. There was one marked difference, though: where food sates hunger, knowledge simply breeds more hunger. When your view of the world expands you start to notice all the holes in the patterns, the flaws in the logic, the shadowed areas of the timeline your eyes trail—then you dive deeper, delve deeper, ever deeper. And thus, the hunger consumes you; burns you out, leaves you a hollow husk as you lose sight of the world. You can't eat knowledge. You can't eat history—it eats you. But part of him had wanted her to respond as she did: "Then, tell me everything—" He would tell her much, but not everything—never everything. Some secrets ought to remain buried, some promises never gone back on. Loyalties to be upheld, even though the rest of the world had forgotten. Mauja's eyes closed, his face serene as his depths shuddered with the power of remembering. Those first, early days with a world ripe for the taking, and powerful allies at his side... His first meeting with the gods; being crowned by the Moon; accompanying d'Artagnan to the Veins to meet Earth and learn about poison; making love to Psyche to seal their future, drunk on life and dreams of glory. His fire had sputtered and gone out, and now, he, too, was but a memory. "Seer?" he rumbled, eyes still closed, voice managing to sound vaguely amused. Sightless, his head turned to her, and he gave the distinct impression of peering at her through his closed lids. "My, such aspirations." As if he had been any less ambitious in his youth. "But, the first time, then." And his eyes pressed closer, conjuring up memory upon memory as his voice said nothing; frozen flashes of the north, of grief and guilt and shame driving him from his precious glacial homeland, and the world around him turned to blood and ash and acrid smoke, burning flesh. Leaving, as it would soon be remembered that he, too, was a witch. And then: "Helovia," he said, voice a quiet rumble as his tail flicked in the still, fog-moist air. "A realm rent by grief and loss and senseless violence. It was not the same as it was today. The Ancient Rotunda had not been ..found, and the dead lands at the southwestern tip was a place known as the Spectral Marsh. In the far north, the entrance to the Aurora Basin was hidden, and there was no way to access the caves beneath the Heart. The God of the Spark was not known; we all thought we had three Gods." How wrong we were, about so many things. His eyes opened, but he looked at the horizon, not at her, and his voice was calm; steadfast as the mountains, as his brain ran ahead to filter the story of Mauja from the story of the Edge. But sometimes, they were hard to tell apart. "The native population was but a shadow of what it had once been; scattered, few and far between, for all intents and purposes forgotten by their Gods as the three siblings sought to rebuild all that had been destroyed. Their three realms were leaderless, no different from the Wilds in all but memory. Earth's land was known as the Windtossed Foothills then, and was neither more nor less than its name. "Then, one day, not too long after I came to Helovia, the three Gods returned, and each announced a leader for their realm. Ra the Sun Emissary—" (A name all but forgotten, a name he had not spoken for years and years.) "—was chosen to lead the Dragon's Throat, and ruled his lands alone. He was the head of the Order of the Sun, accepting any who claimed to worship the Sun God. Gossamer the Benevolent was chosen as Chieftess of the Foothills; she picked Indy the Righteous to lead by her side. And, finally, the Moon appointed as King of the Edge, one Mauja the Frostheart." And in the same vein, it was hard to tell the history of Helovia apart from the one of the Edge. "Outside forces gathered in the Wilds of Helovia. A band of moon-worshipers known as the Qian followed their leader, Mirage, and the wandering Pegasus came under the guidance of Kri and her Tuuli. The Edge was spared from the first of the renewed waves of violence; Kri became known as the Resolute after she drove Ra from his throne in the Throat, and the Sun Emissary fell to one of her warriors. "The Sun, angered by the death of Ra, cursed Helovia with sweltering heat. He appeared in the Edge, burning the forest and the herd; light rains eventually doused the fires, and I went to the other leaders, asking them to come to the Veins with me. Together we approached the two less angry Gods, and they agreed to heal the Edge, for all the good that it did—shortly thereafter, the forests were set on fire again, done by a vindictive mare. I found no time to beseech the Gods again, for Helovia was stirring. Paladin the Valiant rose up against Gossamer, and took the title of Chieftain from her. And after that... We were then a reclusive herd of unicorns, and our tenuous peaces and pacts were not upheld. Promises were broken as the Qian brought both Kri's and Paladin's forces in against us; we fought, we lost, and the Edge entered into a new era. "While the ousted unicorns fled into the north, and were taken in by the newly appeared Spark and given sanctuary in the Aurora Basin—" (.. but the sentence was already too wrecked for him to fit Psyche the Dark Empress into it, so the name of his once beloved went unsaid) "—the Edge changed. Mirage took the title of Dragonheart, and declared the Edge be a place of peace and acceptance while building a glass wall to keep us out. She placed the dragon glass statue here. She burned pyres in the forest at all times, heedless of its history of burning and the suffering flames had caused. And this, this is the Edge I know the least of. Mirage eventually led together with Thor the Gentle Heart. They remained as they were for a long time, while Helovia changed around them. Ophelia and Ktulu led their mercenary band The Grey to victory in the Foothills, taking it from the absent King of Thieves. Torasin, one of the Moon Doctors, died. Soon thereafter, darkness descended on Helovia. "The Gods disappeared and left the realm in complete darkness. Nothing worked as it should; magic was erratic at best, dangerous at worst. Why and how the darkness ended I do not know, for I had briefly returned to my homeland." (To fight a war everyone else was too cowardly, too stubborn, to win.) The only time he had been any kind of honest hero, and it still left a bad taste in his mouth, like ash and rot and foul waste. "I returned, finding the Edge under the care of Mirage and Lace the Silverthorn, but there was someone else there, too: Kahlua, serving them as Glazier." (It was impossible to keep the pain and the fondness out of his voice.) "The glass wall they begun so long ago was finished—but Helovia was not to be at peace. Darkness swept across the realm again, devouring land after land after land, and almost all caught in the embrace of it were turned into decaying monsters, capable of nothing but vicious blood-lust and savage violence. All the herds fled underground, into the caves by the Heart. The passage to them had opened but recently, and some.. some of us didn't quite make it there in time." Absently, his head turned, black nose brushing against scars lining his flank and back. "I had been gifted with immunity to the curse, but how it was ultimately lifted, I do not know. I left Helovia again, and returned to find it ..saved, but changed. "Kahlua, now the Sunshower, had been elected to lead the Edge, together with Kaj, the Stormbringer. Deimos the Reaper remained as Lord of the Basin, together with Illynx the Gilded Blade. Africa the Starry-Eyed and Ampere, the Mother of Companions—" (whatever the hell that means) "—were chosen to lead the Dragon's Throat. The Foothills had been sundered, becoming the Hidden Falls, and placed under the care of Midas the Gallant and Seele the Necromancer. The Ancient Rotunda appeared; the Marsh remained dead, screened by shadows. "And then, the murders began." He had drifted, in and out, but hadn't firmly returned until he found Tolio dead in the Frozen Arch. His eyes closed again, lids pressed together. "The Gods had, as a sign of unity and peace, made a floating island—Caela Insula, the Sky Island." He paused, again, thinking of the black body laid out for all to see upon it. "Helovia chased itself trying to figure out who left the trail of bodies behind—at one point, Kahlua accused me of having done it, threatening to drag me back to the Edge in chains. I talked her out of it, and shortly thereafter, the truth came to light: the God of the Moon had done it, using Gaucho as her proxy. In a final act of defiance she attempted to destroy those who accused Gaucho, but Hototo the Earthsinger, the child of Ktulu and Earth, threw himself between them.. and died for his valiance." (And his sister had fled, crying and broken, with only Mauja to witness her grief.) "Kaj and Kahlua elevated Archibald the Dauntless to lead with them. They were uncomfortable to remain in the Edge—Moon had simply been banished to it, confined, and if her siblings ever punished her, I do not know of it. So, the Edge allied with both the Basin and the Throat, and made short work of the Falls, where Seele had passed on and been replaced by Ghost the Cadaverous. It was a disgusting thing hardly worthy of being called a 'battle'. Midas had been, as noted, taken prisoner, and as I understood it, he died in the north. Archibald and Kaj became the new leaders, and a handful of the minds behind the invasion's planning let it be known the Edge would need new leaders. "And so, I found myself there, unimpressed with the others who sought to rule. Ophelia, then Lady of the Basin, called for those who sought to lead the warriors. Kahlua, caught between two herds, called for diplomats. The diplomats departed with Kahlua for the Throat, and somehow, I found myself entering the fray with them. "Ophelia had chosen Torleik the Bloodskald as King; Kahlua chose me, and I named myself Queen. We agreed to not rebuild the wall, which fell into ruin at the same time that the Hidden Falls were made, by the way. Elsa was declared our General, and at some point, I found myself being referred to as 'the Frozen Light'." Slowly, he shook his head. "We began to grow. Rebuild. Tembovu came to us as a Glazier. Lace returned, but in a fit of true male pigheadedness on both our parts it ended up with me beating him senseless and nearly killing him—I heard he died later, for some other reason, in the Deep Forest." (Where everyone goes to die.) "And then—the Rifts opened. New lands were found, old Gods destroyed, and lives lost." He paused, again, thinking of Shadow's death. "I saved your mother's life once. I could not save her again." He opened his eyes, and blinked. "My eldest daughter died in the final battle. I abdicated on the spot, promoting Tembovu in my stead. You know what happened after that, how Torleik was stripped of his position, and Elsa made Queen. Shortly thereafter, Mirage came to the Edge's borders to die." He shifted, subtly, the tiniest of shudders—or was it just the wind, ruffling his mane?—passing through his body. Time was such a long and damned thing, remembering a curse as much as a blessing. After a moment, he snorted. "I probably forgot a lot, and there's gaps in my knowledge, too." lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . RE: Cold, dark and silent - Erthë - 10-16-2016
RE: Cold, dark and silent - Mauja - 10-16-2016
The wind blew, but even it seemed tired, too slow somehow—the dying breath of a world long since sunken into the sea. It tugged at his long forelock, spun it about his face, tangled it against his frost-covered horn and strung it awkwardly over one ear. It tipped back beneath the uncomfortable sensation of hair sliding across it, spilling the pale strands back where they belonged.
Every thing in the physical world had its place, it seemed, but did all things know their place? The only way his forelock could truly move from its place where it grew from his head was if it let go but hair decomposed, it had to, otherwise the world would be full of hair, and frankly, Mauja wasn't blind enough to not notice such a thing. He exhaled, a long and tired sound, and his head lowered beneath the weight of memory, crowns no longer there; Erthë stood silent next to him, but he didn't look at her. He could feel her, and that was enough, and in the silence he could hear her think. That, too, was enough. With all that he had dredged up, all the memories condensed into something as intangible and flighty as words, he suddenly wanted to be alone—to finally take flight from the edge of the world and soar towards the sea, where there would be nothing but the ocean to whisper in his haunted ears. "I'm sorry," she said as he shuddered out another sigh, eyelids closing over blue eyes again to keep the tears at bay as all the names spun like snow in a snowstorm in his mind—all their faces, a blur, a trail of things dropped but never buried. Sorry for what? he thought in the darkness of his head, listening to the distant hush-hush of the ocean's waves and the much closer breathing of the child. With Glacia? What was it with Glacia? Perfect memory never lasts. (It's a thunderclap, a heartbeat dark as sin, an arrow of fear striking true.) But one word, one word was all he needed: weak. "Oh," he simply said, shining eyes slipping open again. "—but I am, I'm just too good at lying." Too good at pretending. Too good at making things up. Too good at smiling even though he buried his heart. "Thank you for telling me all this, Mauja. It's really a lot, isn't it... all that really happened in just six years?" To her, it seemed a lot in a short time; to him, it seemed forever. His eyes closed again, black muzzle dropping towards the sea until it brushed the air where the limestone cliff ended and death began. "Yes. So much death and despair, and just six years." The eye nearest to her, pale as glacier ice, cracked open and peered up at her. "Think of me in six years, will you? When you look at where you are, what you've done..." His tail moved through the dreary air, but it was hardly even worthy of being called a lash, the mellow way in which it rippled against his hocks. "I'll leave you to your thoughts," he said as he turned and walked away, drifting into the fog, a ghost falling back into the void of memory. [ The end. <3 ] lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet walk him down the hall, repeat and when he's strong enough to stand alone you'll notice what big teeth . . . |